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There’s a new totem pole overlooking Sandy Beach in Juneau. The Yanyeidí Gooch (Wolf) Totem Pole is meant to honor the T’aakú Kwáan and the residents of “Akáx Yaa Andagán”, Douglas Indian Village that the City of Douglas burned down in 1962 to make way for a harbor and park.
Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
Three canoes came ashore at Auke Rec. The canoes, built by Wayne Price, had been on the water for four days, including patch of rough weather on Saturday. Two were from Haines and one was from Haines Junction in Canada.
Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
Zach Boxley and Donna Cole talk about their artwork at the Native Artist Market as part of Celebration 2018 in Juneau.
Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
British Columbia-based artist Andy Everson likes to use dark imagery from “Star Wars” and add traditional Native designs as a way to uplift Native people.
“As a child of the 1970s, I grew up around ‘Star Wars’ and collected all the toys and everything,” Everson said. “Fast forward many years later, I kind of combined my childhood passions with another passion that I grew up with, that’s my Native culture and art forms. So I decided to blend the two as kind of a commentary on colonialism and imperialism, and how as indigenous people we’re able to take those art forms and decorate the signs of imperialism with our own art forms and kind of subvert the meaning behind it.”
Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
Artisans from Southeast Alaska and British Columbia displayed blankets, aprons and other items Wednesday at a weaving presentation.
Weavers and weaving historians were among the about 50 people who attended the event in the Shuka Hit clan house in the Walter Soboleff Building.
One presenter, Della Cheney, stressed the importance of learning those traditions.
“There’s those things that I enjoy about our ways of life that are so rich and so dynamic because it’s life,” said Cheney, who is Haida and Tlingit. “It’s our way of life that creates these things that are with us today.”
This was her second year presenting at Celebration. Cheney hopes communities invest more in cultural education.
“We have to find ways to teach our families and continue our way of life and help our self be economically present in our own communities with the things we make and the way we live so … we can celebrate our way and be who we are, Tlingit, Haidas and Tsimshian people.”
Kwakwaka’wakw and Haida weaver Meghann O’Brien of Alert Bay, British Columbia, first started weaving in 2007, making baskets to collect berries.
“I really consider spending time on the land harvesting food to be the main source of where it came from for me. I think that’s where it came from for our people, too, is just for a really practical purpose.”
She later had several mentors who helped teach her different styles, including her Ravenstail teacher William White.
“When he opened the door for that and began teaching me the techniques, I felt really honored and privileged and that the knowledge was so sacred,” O’Brien said. “My personal thing that I’m more drawn to is much more utilitarian. I just really like the plain work baskets more than anything. I just think being able to use things is really important.”
O’Brien was attending her first Celebration.
“Even just at this gathering with the few presenters who are here, the different teachings we’ve received, the similarities and differences between those, there’s a lot of similarities obviously,” she said. “It feels very close to this place. It just feels very close to that handing of knowledge that occurred with Jennie Thlunaut. And it’s really powerful and really special.”
Thlunaut mentored Clarissa Rizal, a Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver who died in December 2016.
Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.
